Re: official support for more scripting languages in gnome needed

[Vlad Harchev <hvv hippo ru>]

On Mon, 19 Mar 2001, Liam Quin wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 18, 2001 at 01:39:42PM +0400, Vlad Harchev wrote:
> > What I propose is to make popular scripting languages like Python and Perl
> > [...]  a requirement of gnome (so e.g. gnome won't run without them)
> 
> I think Gnome is already large; using Python or Perl for a gnome app
> is fine, but *requiring* Python, Perl, Ruby, Prolog, LISP etc. to be
> installed before *any* Gnome software runs, won't fly.

 Sorry, I was not enough clear in my original message. I meant that probably
even some core utilities (like floppy disk formatting utility) would be
advocated for being written in scripting languages; if user decided not to
install that scripting language implementation, just that utility won't run,
all other apps that are not written in that scripting language will work fine
even its implementation was not installed.
 
> Not everyone has fast powerful machines.  I have a 200MHz PI with 64 MBytes
> of RAM here (and a more powerful laptop).  Linux is popular because it
> runs on lower-end machines.

 RAM consumption of small utility, say Python, will be not very much different
from consuption of C-based utility (I don't think it will differ in more than
3 Mb of virtual image size, 2/3 of which will be additional libraries and
interpreter pages that are swappable - out of say 6 in total for C-based
utility). That's more than tolerable for utility that is not run very often
and that doesn't stay in memory for long time. But in return user gets much
more flexible, less buggy and feauture-rich utility.

 Sure, installation of Python takes about 20 megs on disk (with gtk support
included) but it's not RAM. 

> Let's not make GNOME the desktop for Rich Kids Only.
> I'd like to see work on reducing the memory and install footprint a *lot*.
>
> Lee
> 
> 
> -- 
> Liam Quin - Barefoot in Toronto - liam holoweb net - http://www.holoweb.net/
> Ankh: irc.sorcery.net www.valinor.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org
> author, The Open Source XML Database Toolkit, Wiley, August 2000
> Co-author, The XML Specification Guide, Wiley, 1999
> 

 Best regards,
  -Vlad